Need an Established Business? Where to BUY or SELL a SaaS Business Online - with Juan Ignacio García

Quan welcome to the show thank you thank you for hosting me my pleasure So today we're going to be talking about um buying and selling ass SAS business on marketplaces so you are the the founder and CEO of BOS so why don't we start there why don't you tell us about uh you know what does the the business do who is it for and what's the main problem you're helping to solve sure so we run um platform for buying and selling small businesses um the main difference with acquire. comom or other platforms out there being

is that we offer the financing so if you um if you go to our platform and start searching for businesses to buy for example you will find out that um for every opportunity that is posted there you will get a temp sheet uh a financing temp sheet for around half uh of the of the ask price so that is essentially a tool for completing the acquisition uh which uh from our understanding is is a clear bottleneck if you want to buy a a small business actually if you look at the businesses that are listed there

many of them come from uh marketplaces and platforms that uh don't have this financing um option uh so we help them close deals as well so in the end um the the problem or the main issue that we're solving here is helping people acquire businesses by providing financing by leveraging their uh cash availability their equity so that they complete a bigger acquisition or or just the deal that they want to complete great so the the the financing obviously makes the process that you know much more easier because that's obviously one of the biggest hurdles to

to being able to to buy a business you you um the buas marketplace is for all types of uh recurring Revenue businesses but obviously we have a lot of people uh listening to the show who are you know B2B SAS Founders so specifically you know when it comes to SAS um what type of businesses you know do typically well on on BOS so we're looking for businesses we have obviously criteria that are related to the fact that we are financing the Acquisitions so that means that we're looking for profit that's uh very important at least

24 months of truck record uh good customer retention and that's generally found on B2B SI businesses that's not to say that b2c businesses are ineligible but generally they are uh they have more issues passing the retention test um we seeking for generally Niche products that uh serve a specific audience and uh that have a a high switching cost for customers to to change to other uh platforms so high stickiness and and the like in general we're seeking a revenue stream that will be sustained uh through the course of the years and that's highly related to

how the product is and uh how the customer base engages with that product okay so I think the general format of what we're going to do here is we'll talk about first of all uh the process of selling uh a SAS business on a Marketplace and just the general you know dos and don'ts and mistakes to avoid and how to be successful with that then we'll talk about how to go about buying a SAS business on a Marketplace and then we'll talk about financing options um that you know are available to to Founders now obviously

you know you you run BOS and and that's one Marketplace but as you and I were talking before we recorded you know the goal really here is for us to try and educate people um you know regardless of whether you use Bas or any other Marketplace how can we educate them to really feel confident about the buying you know Andor selling process and to feel like you know they understand what are the common mistakes they they should avoid making and and how they can get a successful outcome whatever that you know is for them so

why don't we start with um you know the process of of selling a business on the marketplace what are the sort of essential steps for a Founder um you know who wants to you know get ready to sell their business like how do they prepare for that I think that uh the first initial steps that they need to take is first of all making sure that uh the pnl is uh in place they have all the data and info that a potential buyer will want to see and that's generally the financial statements um in s

businesses uh monthly panels are very important so people will want to see at least 24 month months of track record and and they will want to see how that pnl has evolved over the course of those 24 months and that's useful for spotting growth trends for spotting seasonality perhaps and understanding more how the the whole business Works um they will most likely want to see customer retention customer cohorts uh how customers are behaving uh whether they are uh taking monthly subscriptions or quarterly annually subscriptions that's the type of thing that a buyer will want to

see um and other than that making sure that all the legals are in place I think that's also H very important because uh sometimes there are occasions in which you can't transfer the business because uh all the the documents are not there and there's no way to migrate uh to a new buyer so first of all that's something that you have to get right and make sure that um you're prepared for answering the questions and uh and obviously um getting everything right for for the buyer to assess the the business um that's one thing and

then the other other thing I think is uh obviously understanding what the value of the business is you don't want to start a process if you are not sure that you're getting the value um that you expect so in in the sense you have to understand what's uh the market out there and um and get into a good understanding of what the value of your business is which is by the way something that marketplaces Brokers can help with so yeah I mean obviously valuation is a hugely important topic if someone is thinking of selling their

business is there um you know in terms of using a Marketplace or or going some some other route to sell their business is there any difference in a potential valuation or is it generally about the same I think generally um engaging with an advisor um and that could be a Marketplace it could be a broker will help you maximize uh the opportunities of selling so sometimes when you're selling a business you might think that there's a buyer U that you know well uh because uh you're familiar with him maybe it's a customer maybe it's a

A supplier H maybe it's a competitor um but if you just engageing one-on-one conversations with those people you might end up not optimizing the value of your business whereas if you um engage with a broker or post it on a Marketplace in which you have access to a much broader buyer base um you might have the chances of optimizing the value of your business and learning more about uh how the market is is valuing that business and even if you end up selling to that same guy or that same buyer that uh you thought was

the most likely buyer for your business perhaps you will get more by generating that competitive tension so I think it's good to at least explore what's out there and uh and asking questions about what valuation of your business is and and typically like just ballpark like what kind of multiples are we talking about here for for a SAS business and also what are the factors that might you know you know improve that or or you know kind of potentially hurt hurt the business that's a very good question and it depends a lot on the business

itself uh we've seen multiples as low as 3x and perhaps that's not super compelling but it's if it's a business that is downtrending or has some specific issues of transferability Etc it might be a good solution for the seller to sell but uh generally the market is offering anywhere between four and six times profit or if you want to price it as as Revenue slightly lower multiples two three four times uh Revenue um that's what we're seeing right now that that doesn't mean that perhaps a business that is growing quite fast that has very good

customer retention uh shouldn't deserve an eight times profit multiple um but uh but yeah generally the market is offering between four and six times great okay so if I'm a founder and I'm thinking okay great I want to sell my business um you know obviously I want to get the best valuation that that I can um what are some of the the most important factors that you think make the difference between a business that would be you know priced at like a 4X versus you know a 78 x valuation I think the the first uh

thing that you have to assess is is the product so is the product something that is solving a problem that no one else is is solving um do you have like a captive user base or customer base uh that benefits from your product and has high switching costs can move to a a similar solution um so that's that's very important is it a product that can perhaps um evolve over time or that you can um easily um work on and improve that's also something that that is important you might have to make sure that uh

it's transferable to a a new developer that will take over the code and uh and that's something that's going to uh work going forward more or less easily um that's one thing and then I guess that um as as I said before we provide the financing for these businesses as well and what we look uh for is what most of the equity buyers look for as well which is very strong customer retention very strong profitability very steady um Revenue flow not something that is uh declining and um and if that's uh if if that's a

reality and on top of that you're in a very hot segment um that's getting a lot of attention from investors uh rollup companies and so on you might end up securing a Sixx multiple or even higher than that just to recap in terms of preparing we we're saying you know number one you want to make sure uh your financials are in good shape and and the main thing you you said there was the most important thing was having a monthly p&l that goes back know at least 24 months that that people can look at um

obviously just in terms of you know the operational aspects of the business and and somebody be able to understand um how well it's doing and and functioning and and so on um the legal stuff and then typically you know you understand you go in and you understand your valuation you chat with somebody um you know whether it's a broker or an adviser you know place like Bost and then I guess the next step is you know you you go out there and you you listed so um number one I would say like Beyond BOS you

you talked about the you know what you offer and the benefits of that in terms of you know specifically the financing but if somebody's saying okay great that's one option I also want to think about you know a couple of other places um how how would they what what what's how do they go about like deciding where to list um you know their their business that's a good question as well I think uh there should be a Feit between your advisor your Marketplace um and your business so perhaps you might want to go uh to

F International uh who are very good at selling such businesses but if your business is too small for them they won't take the Mandate and even if they would take it they they wouldn't do it as well as as they would do with a 5 to 10 million business which is um where the focus now um if you want like very um very detailed advice from from the broker and a really Hands-On process then that's something that um you uh might want to consider versus having a more like less managed or more like marketpl style

type of things so for example Flippa is generally um very good at having a lot of deals and a lot of buyers but it's mostly self-service um ac.com has a a hybrid model in which you can have like the manage deals which is where the broker engages with the seller and provides a hands-on experience but at the same time they have a broad Marketplace and then if you seeking something slightly different which is what we are offering um what we have is a very curated uh selection of buyers and these buyers have been pre-approved by

us as well so they have the funds they have um a good credit score and they have a strong operational track record so they have everything that's needed for success eding in in buying a business um plus we offer the financing as well so that means that generally that increases the chances of of closing a deal so I I'm not saying there's a a a unique solution for each customer but I generally feel that you have to find which advisor or which platform is is best suited to your specific business let's talk about listing the

the business depending on you know how how busy the the marketplace can be it may be you know it may be easy or hard to to get noticed or or found by the the right buyer so when someone is thinking about listing what are some of the factors that they should be thinking about to um increase their chances of getting found by the right buyer that's again a good question I think that if you're looking to um be highlighted in the middle of a huge Marketplace um getting advice or getting a managed deal as as

acquire uh calls them or uh an advisor as we as we provide is something that is very important because in the end um you these advisors will send custom alerts to buyers that uh have a very good fit with your business and that's the way to get uh noticed um if you you have a business that is perhaps uh smaller or you don't want to spend so much in fees then it's okay to be just part of the marketplace and then obviously there's a lot of viewership and and audience looking at that and at some

point in time someone will end up making a match but if you want to accelerate that much and and make it happen having an advisor involved is a very important uh a very important step um again we curate bias so we make sure that uh we get all the info from uh the perspective of obviously making sure that they can acquire a business but at the same time we get all the info on what type of business they can and they want to acquire so that that makes the mat um easier so I think that's

a really important distinction that you just uh laid out there so it sounds like okay you you have to be you have to understand the type of marketplace that you're going to be listing your business in and if it's more of a self-served type business like uh flipper as you mentioned then you're really on your own in terms of you've got to make sure that you are doing all the right things to you know to to maximize the discoverability of that listing and um um you know the types of buyers that you might be getting

contacted by you know maybe you know um I don't know how vetted they are on places like flipper um on the other hand if you're going to more of a a curated experience you know you're working with an advisor um I guess then it becomes less about you know kind of the optimization of the listing or discoverability because you know you're going to be having that advisor as you said going out and reaching out to the right types of buyers who have already been um you know prev vetted uh to try and make that that

connection so ultimately is that a good way to think about it like in terms of you know what a self- serve experience might be like or versus what more of a you know you know an advisor type experience would that's exactly yeah that's exactly how I see it and actually it's an interesting development that we're seeing in the in the world of uh small m&a in the past few years which is generally um marketplaces are getting into the uh advisory space and on the other hand you get advisors trying to um build Marketplace like experience

so in the end it's just a matter of deciding which way you want to go right um I think generally and that's why we tend to provide advice is it's good to have someone who um has understood what your business is and has a good idea of um which buyers will be a good fit for your business so that they can push uh in the right directions but uh that doesn't mean that uh a Marketplace experience is is is a is a bad thing in some cases okay so we we get listed we get connected

with Buyers or ideally you know the the perfect buyer and then we have to start to think about how do we how do we negotiate and and close on this deal and I guess that you know when you start thinking about negotiating on selling a business it can sound pretty um stressful uh again it would be helpful if you maybe just tell us about okay what what are some tips that you can offer Founders um to you know to sort of navigate through this process and and and get the best possible deal in terms of

selling their business and then maybe how you know that as you sort of described earlier with the market places how that experience may vary depending on on where they're selling the business and how much they have to do versus how what you know an advisor can can help them with yes that's a that's a very good question because in the end this is where the advisor starts providing a lot of value through the process so I think in general the the first advice I would give to someone who's talking to customers sorry to talking to

potential buyers is securing a first offer Loi or even um email proposal H as as early as possible because that will generate additional attration that will attract uh more buyers because they will find like they will have a sense of urgency um they will want to um perhaps improve the offer that someone else has made and obviously you know when you're you're um when you buy in a home if someone else is interested that probably means that the home is is good well same thing with the business if someone else is interested in in that

business it's because there's something good behind it or at least that's the psychology that the buyers have so that um first offer is very important it doesn't have to be the best offer generally the first uh proposals that you're going to get are not the ones that fulfill your your um expectations in terms of price but that gives you an upper hand in terms of attracting additional buyers in terms of negotiating with uh with additional buyers so so yeah getting that one H is is super important so so just to clarify there so even if

you you know the first uh offer you get is something that you know is not a great offer you wouldn't seriously consider it but are you saying it's still there's still value in in not shutting down negotiations right away and and asking for that that um that letter of intent or that email proposal because at least it keeps the door open to maybe future negotiation and it gives you more leverage with with other potential buyers exactly if you just dismiss it straight away um you won't get that leverage for engaging with other buyers so if

you go to another buyer you can tell him look I have an offer um and uh if you're quick enough in putting together a proposal perhaps I can go with you for whatever reason whereas if you just have dismissed the previous offer you can't say that because in the end I would be outright lying obviously right right yeah okay um so let's let's talk about you you know let's let's assume you you've got you know you did well you've got multiple offers um there's you you find a great buyer and it looks like you know

a good deal for both sides what happens next what's the general process in terms of getting to a point where you close the sale transition the business over and and typically you know how long you know does something like that take so once you've signed a letter of intent then it's a matter of the buyer putting together the due diligence process so you will be in the hands of a buy obviously you can control the scope H you can let them know that you don't want to run through a very lengthy due diligence process and

that's something that you perhaps have discussed prior to signing the the letter of intent um but yeah you generally will have to be responsive uh so that the buyer doesn't see uh red flags in the way you behave not not only in the info that you provide but also in the way you behave because that's a a a very important signal of how the transition or the migration of the business is going to look like um they will provide an asset purchase either you can draft an asset purchase agreement with a with councel or the

buyer will produce that first draft of asset purchase agreement in my experience generally it's the buyer who produced the first uh draft so you will have to be patient you have to be responsive you will have to make sure that um you're helping the buyer understand the good things um of the business um and once that done on once that's done it's just a matter of signing and migrating and transferring all all the assets how long does that process typically take it generally you you want to select buyers that are experienced or have been through

that before so maybe not experienced buying a business but at least they know what they want to find H perhaps they run another business and their due diligence will be more targeted towards finding the the you know the first or the key things that they need to understand um in the business so first of all if you work with an experienc buyer the due deligence will be much shorter and much quicker but I would say ballpark anywhere between 30 and 60 days if I'm founder and I I've got that offer and I'm going through this

period for let's say the next 60 days or so like is that going to be like a huge part of my time am I just going to be like spending most of the day like answering questions from this you know this buyer or um you do you've kind of do you think it's it's a fairly streamlined process if they're you know using a Marketplace like BOS I think uh the answer is it depends right if you have prepared everything well if you're working working with an advisor that has G you given you some guidance of

what the buyer will typically want to see um it shouldn't be uh an Overkill um if you haven't prepared if you don't have all the documents handy if you don't have I don't know IP titles or uh domain registrations and all those things that a buyer will want to see um handy then obviously it will be more challenging and uh that might end up giving a poor impression uh to the buyer um generally Brokers advisers um try to engage with you early on and they try to warn you about what you need to do Etc

um so if you have done that preparation before ahead of time um it shouldn't be again an Overkill it should be something that's varable and you can manage the business at the same time let's um let's kind of switch gears and talk about the the other side of the marketplace and actually being a buyer so you know many people I talk to who want to get into you know running a SAS business um decide you know I don't want to build this thing from scratch I'd prefer to find a business that you know already you

know is up and running has some customers maybe um you know maybe maybe it's not really realizing it's potential today and you know I could buy that business and and with the right you know the the the the right strategy the right execution you know I could turn that into you know something you know far more successful so if we if we're going to kind of go through that that process and and I'm I'm thinking about using a a Marketplace let's let's kind of you know where do I start again is it just a a

matter of um you know I'm going to do some research like what does that look like obviously I'm biased because not only because I started BOS and and I ran BOS but because before starting BOS I tried to acquire three businesses uh I I was unable to secure financing and that's why uh that's why buos is here is that right wow so it was from your own personal experience that I'm a firm believer that um buying a business H sometimes is much more valuable than starting one because you skip the initial stages of finding product

Market fit um especially business that has been running for a couple of years already and has customers um that are generating Revenue um so yeah I'm I'm a very strong believer of of the value of of m& but obviously that has a price that comes with a price so that means that you have to pay you have to find financing for acquiring a business um so I think that it all depends on whether you have like a very clear uh I would say entrepreneurial Spirit some people have that and they like to start things from

scratch and uh and have and go through all that Discovery process it's like very personal rather than a financial decision I think it's a very personal decision of who whether you want to go through those initial stages whether you enjoy um finding a business model and uh generating your F Revenue um Etc um because financially honestly I think it doesn't really make sense to go through that um you know I I started a business I was a co-a with on a previous business as well I was really lucky that uh both uh scale well but

uh there's a lot of risk in in that process we you know you you talked to about when we were talking about selling a business what buyers look for so we've kind of already covered that in terms of what are the sort of things that you should be looking for in terms of finding a um a great business with great potential maybe can you share maybe some of the mistakes that you've seen buyers make when they're they're trying to look for a business I think you have to buy a business um that you can relate

to uh in the end if you're buying something that's way out of your comfort zone chances are you're going to make a lot of mistakes so for example I've seen very smart people with a finance background in Investment Banking Consulting Etc b s businesses and they have never worked with development teams um with developers they're not developers themselves so um they will have to take care of the code and and and all that you have to solve that piece if you want to get into SAS um you have to be familiar with what's under the

hood or at least um work with people that are familiar and and can help you um take over it so in the end again at least some degree of connection with the business that you want to buy h a little understanding of of what's going on with that business is something that um you need to do that's uh probably the the first mistake that people do is when finding a business okay great right so let's say we've we've you know we've identified a business and now you know the foot's on the other shoe you know

we we're the person who's who's writing a letter of intent or you know sending a you know a proposal or whatever that is um again we talked about you know some of the due diligence that you would want to make sure that you're handling when um you know you're selling a business but from the buyer's perspective you know if someone's listening to this and they're so far they're they're kind of following along and they're saying okay I like the sound of this I like the idea of of um buying um a SAS business what are

some you know some red flags that they want to make sure that they're looking out for like what are some of the signs um of a business that you know may not be um as uh as interesting or or have as much potential as they you know as it appears to have I think the first red flag that you have to I mean you have to get along with the seller very well because you will work on a transition um with him or her over the C of a few months it's not just migrating and

uh and that's it so you will have to make sure that you're partnering with someone um with whom you can work and with whom you can you can engage um the reason I'm saying this is because sometimes you will see um that the business is just not transferable because the seller um won't cooperate or won't cooperate to the to the scale that um that uh they should I guess that again and U I'm talking about BOS again but the fact that we are uh curating Sellers and underwriting sellers um reduces that risk a lot uh

but still that's something that the buyer needs to clear out because it's also somehow personal so if you see um I don't know a seller that um is hiding info or not um engageing properly that's definitely a a red flag um that um you need to raise would you say that's the main one like you know obviously we we talked about the making sure that the you know what aspects of the financials and and General Health of the business to look at but beyond that would you say that's the main red flag in terms of

you know if you feel like you know if if it's this hard to complete basically a transaction like how hard is it going to be to work with this person for for months I think that's a very important red flag other than that obviously you have to audit we that's something that we do as well for our financing you have to audit all the the revenues and make make sure because sometimes these small businesses um have uh I would say a lower quality of information and again if you work with a reputable Marketplace of broker

um you will reduce the risk a lot but still you have to run your own audit and and review that's something that we also tell bias we obviously run our own due diligence for uh approving financing and that on and for on booding people to the marketplace but you also have to verify that the revenues are there that um everything is there and um that all the legals and the ownership uh titles and and everything are are there and that's a if you find something that just doesn't click you should perhaps rethink whether you want

to buy a business or or not again working with a reputable broker will mean that um those risks will be much lower okay great so I think in in terms of the you know negotiation and closing I kind of feel like we we covered that when we were talking about selling the business buiness I don't is there is there anything else that you'd add to that from from a buyer's perspective or do you think we we already covered that well I think we we covered a lot of uh a lot of topics obviously the devil's

in the details I mean once you once you get into it um you will find out that uh there's a lot of things that you haven't contemplated every acquisition is a learning process even if you have acquired like 30 businesses the 31st one will be a learning process again because you will find new things so that that's what exciting about it um but at the same time that's uh what makes it challenging okay um I want to talk about financing obviously that's a big part of what you do with BOS whether they're using BOS or

or they're going you know somewhere else to get financing you know obviously you know Founders familiar with you know Angels VC funding but there's also loans and revenue based financing and so on so in this type of kind of marketplace situation what what are the most relevant types of financing what type of financing do you provide and you know maybe just give us kind of like some of the pros and cons of of some of the different options that are available I think generally when it comes to acquisition financing there aren't that many options available

because you mentioned Revenue based financing Revenue based financing is great for SAS businesses but more like for working capital for growth uh so platforms like cap CH founder path all all these people that are providing funding to to SAS businesses will provide funding for growth uh rather than fore an acquisition so if you want to narrow it down to who is providing acquisition financing I think many people go the the the SBA route and SBA is good because uh the cost of financing is lower um the the payback term is is long and um in

general they provide a high part of the high percentage of the AC acquisition price but at the same time it's a very slow process they will request a personal guarrantee which means you're risking your own personal assets and sometimes they won't understand such businesses because um because they will seek their their SBA in general work with banks and they will seek for some type of tangible assets which uh obviously s businesses don't have um and and that's where we that's actually how buo started the the inability of finding financing options for for acquiring businesses we

as an alternative lender work uh in providing um term loans acquisition financing loans generally run between 40 and 70% of the of the acquisition price that's um the typical Advance rate that we give and um terms of around four years it's uh it's a good acquisition if you want to complete an acquisition as soon as possible and complete your Capital stock with your own cash and um an external financing so you don't have to use that much of your cash um so that's uh that's one thing that you can also use and I think that

the third option and I always like to say that BOS competes with cash buyers people who end up just buying it with their own Equity because they don't want to leverage the business because they perhaps will leverage the business at a latest stage or maybe on the second acquisition um so that's also another option and for that you can find you know raise money from family and friends from small family offices vs are generally not there because uh vs will want to find um a very steep growth pattern and um and acquisition is is not

the way you're going to get that these are generally more mature businesses um so yeah I like to say that we're pretty unique or in this acquisition financing space um but yeah there there's other options as I mentioned okay so so basically you've either got to you know you the SBA option um you know acquisition financing through you know some something like BOS or clear out your savings right or whatever whatever you're bringing to to go and buy that business um if if someone is financing through you uh does does the personal guarantee still apply

apply are they still having to do that we don't request personal guarantees and again that's one of the reasons why people go with us instead of going the SBA route um actually what happens in many cases is that people acquire a business with us and after a couple of years they switch to SBA once they are confident that they have stabilized the business and they have the risk it and so they're willing to take that personal guarantee in exchange of perhaps a lower uh interest rate or uh generally a cheaper cost of of financing so

yeah we don't and we actually facilitate that process we we're in the end what we want to make sure is that um the business has the capital stack that it needs at every stage uh of maturity okay so this this acquisition financing that you provide are there a lot of people out there doing that today as far as I know I I don't think so I I haven't seen especially in this small or micro cap space in which uh deals range anywhere from 100K to 2 3 million I haven't seen many lenders doing this um

but um I I would love to see more people coming into the space actually I think uh it would be good for the for the industry okay so um you know I'm I'm I'm a potential buyer um you know I decide that okay yeah I think you know what you guys are doing in terms of the acquisition based financing that that kind of makes sense for me you know how what's the process like you know how how easy or hard is it to to get approved and what are the things that you look for I

think that one of the things that you would first do is come to our platform form and see what's on the marketplace because those deals have been pre-approved and this if there's something that clicks for you um you've walked half of the path already because it's pre-approved and we looked at the business we know that it's a good fit for our financing so you only have to complete the buyer site which we'll get to now um if you can't find anything compelling there you will probably look into marketplaces like acquire. comom Flippa perhaps Brokers like

f International or you will have your own proprietary deal flow and you will come to us seeking an approval for the business it's a very simple application we um look for cohorts user cohorts Revenue cohorts uh we look for that 24 month p&l um split on a on a monthly basis and with that we can issue a a pre-approval for the business and then in terms of the owner we will also ask for um we will want to see theit score that's a soft pool so you don't have to worry about um your credit score

being impacted we will want to see what your operational experience is so we will request that you um give us your LinkedIn profile so we can understand more uh where you're coming from and um and why you want to buy a business um that's the other thing that we look into and the third one is given that we're going to co-invest and we're going to finance up to yeah 70% of the of the acquisition we want to see that you have have the funds for funding the equity portion of the of the acquisition so we

will request for approve of funds um other than that generally the process is is very quick and under one week we can provide an answer of whether um it's a go or or a no goal so yeah I mean because basically I just kind of clicked to me that you know not only are you investing in the business um you know that someone is planning to buy you're also basically investing in the buyer and so you need to make sure that both sides of that uh look good and they're you know they have the potential

and and they're going to be set up for for Success uh I kind of got me thinking like when if if I wanted to list my business let's say on BOS and um you know maybe you you you look at that and say you know this is not the kind of business that we'd actually we'd ever invest in would I still be able to list on your Marketplace or or do you kind of kind of gate that to a point where it's like no there there's a certain criteria that we look for um before we

even list you on on on our Marketplace so we have uh we have two sets of criteria one of them is underwriting criteria which is criteria for providing the financing and we have um listing criteria or on booing criteria which is a little bit more open but obviously there's still accuration in the type of uh businesses that we want to list on our on our platform um I you know out of transparency I must say if that if we can't provide financing for your business your chances of selling with us are going to be lower

so perhaps you will want to figure out whether you want to sell with uh other Marketplace um there are in general you have Market places that are very open in terms of vertical so other than SAS businesses will they will list I don't know lead generation platforms and other types of business models that's not something that we typically do um so in the end I strongly advise to try to go through both the listing process and the underwriting process to understand whether you get a a pre-approval for financing as well uh one other question about

the financing we you going back to like you know SBA the acquisition based and being a cash buyer does the type of financing that you choose uh have any impact on negotiations or the structure of the deal like for example if someone says you know I like the SBA option great there's benefits to that but does that mean you know by the time you actually get approved the business may have been sold to somebody else that's one of the reasons why people engage with us because we're very quick and um and we're not a bottleneck

so sellers want uh in the end SBA is very slow and that means that at some point in time through the process the seller might just want to seek over other opportunities if the if you got a patient seller then perhaps you can structure an SBA loan from the from the beginning or since Inception um but that's again why many people end up buying with us and after a couple of years they refine us with SBA okay great so we covered the the general process of selling your SAS business we talked about buying uh a

business and you know some of the dos and don'ts with that and we've covered uh the different Revenue sorry the different financing options that are available to you if you're thinking of buying a business um I also appreciated that you mentioned you know a bunch of other options that are out there like you know acquire. comom and and flipper and Fe International and so on so there are some options out there that people can go and research um let's say if someone decides they want to go for BOS like you know either as a buyer

or seller or you know what what what are the next steps what would I do yeah well first of all I mentioned that other people because I think they're doing a great job I think one of the things is that this ecosystem um is really healthy because you have many different options and uh you will just have to find the most suited uh for you but if you want to uh work with BOS you have to just go to bos.com bos.com and um and sign up and then uh the app will direct you to um

whether you're a buyer or a seller and it's a very simple onboarding process for both sides of the of uh of the marketplace and then um at some point in time you will be contacted by one of our advisors uh which which can handhold you through the process and uh can work with you in understanding your objectives and U and achieving your your goals so I I think it's a it's a very straightforward process just go there and uh and and get going great um is there any sort of vetting that happens like is like

if if I wanted to think about buying a business can I just go up and and sign up today and start looking in in the Marketplace or do I have to get vetted before I can even look at what's available you can start looking at businesses you will see a list of businesses but you won't be able to interact with sellers unless you go uh uh and complete the the qualification process or the betting process okay great well H thank you so much it's been uh it's been really helpful to go through this I hope

we did a great job in uh helping Founders you know just educate them in terms of uh the buying and and selling process on on marketplaces uh as I said we we've given them some options in terms to think about terms of where they go and look to to buy and sell um some some of the you know U different orbe it you know slightly limiting um limited uh financing options that are available if you're going to go and acquire a business um and uh you know any any parting words any kind of you know

advice or anything you'd leave you know people with I think uh buying or selling your business is very exciting so I would uh you know definitely recommend the the experience I think it might be a life-changing experience either because you cash out and you can move on to something else or because you're embarking in a new adventure so I would definitely um I would definitely encourage people to explore that route okay great so uh if uh folks want to check out BOS they can go to bos.com and uh if folks want to get in touch

with you what's the best way for them to do that or they can find me on LinkedIn juo Garcia um BOS so it's a it's an easy find yeah we'll uh we'll include a link to your uh LinkedIn profile in the show notes as well so we people can find you great thank you so much appreciate your time and uh thank you for uh educating us on the process of buying and selling a a SAS business my pleasure amama thank you all the best Cheers